GOMA, Congo (AP) — In a sunlit rehabilitation room, Jerome Jean Claude Amani offers a faint smile. For the first time since losing his wife and children to a rebel attack in eastern Congo, the 35-year-old is standing again — one leg his own, the other made of plastic.

“I feel at peace,” said Amani, who lives on the outskirts of the North Kivu provincial capital of Goma. “I don’t see this leg as plastic, but as a second chance.”

Amani’s wife and four children were killed when they came under attack by armed groups in April. Badly wounded and seeking help to start over, he found his way to Shirika la Umoja, an orthopedic center on the front line of eastern Congo’s conflict in Goma, which finds itself overwhelmed by surging numbers of casualties.

Congo’s mineral-rich east has long been bat

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